


A Stronger Me, Maybe

by Snap_crackle_spock



Series: Another Reality, Perhaps [1]
Category: Spider-Gwen (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Drabble, Let Gwen be happy you fucks, set in Spiderverse Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 23:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snap_crackle_spock/pseuds/Snap_crackle_spock
Summary: In every universe, across every timeline, there are commonalities. Universal truths with no rhyme or reason, only occurrence. A restaurant might be called the same thing in different realities; the theme of spider-centric heroes persists; each universe had a weird cat video phase.Peter Parker dies.-Drabble set in the Spiderverse Universe





	A Stronger Me, Maybe

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble because, even though I've never read SpiderGwen, her backstory in Spiderverse gave me some Strong Emotions(tm) cue me insatiably reading through the SpiderGwen wiki. Anyway I probably took a lot of liberties with her backstory bc of that, but here we are.

In every universe, across every timeline, there are commonalities. Universal truths with no rhyme or reason, only occurrence. A restaurant might be called the same thing in different realities; the theme of spider-centric heroes persists; each universe had a weird cat video phase. 

Peter Parker dies. 

Two seconds of seeing that clip on the news of the Not-Her’s timeline and suddenly Gwen was a year younger. A year warmer. A year happier. A year lighter than the weight of the world she’s been carrying around. Then a flood of the present.

What kind of sick fuck brought her here to go through all of that again, anyway? It didn’t even ruin her progress in coming to terms with everything because she hadn’t made any to begin with. That sort of thing can happen when your best friend dies and you literally can’t talk to anyone about it. 

What was the point of all of this, any of this, if she couldn’t even protect the ones she loved? Her reality or any other?

That little hole in the ground that could never actually contain all the light that was Peter. 

Those spider plushies and homemade masks that felt like a robbery of Gwen’s private right to mourn.

The heaping pile of nothing that was a disgrace, because all she could think about when she saw it all she could think about was how the Peter in her universe, _her_ Peter, had never seen half the recognition. 

Every inch killed her more.

Fuck the people of this New York for thinking they had any right to miss Peter Parker when they didn’t even know him, would never know him like Gwen. Never miss him like her. 

And then all of a sudden her whiplash returns, because there he is again. He shouldn’t be, because he should be in that grave with eighty thousand meaningless and stupid nothing-more-than-knick-knacks heaped on top of it, but he was here.

Not hers, because who could ever be, but here.

 

* * *

  
  


“Kid is something wrong with you?”

_ Only everything.  _

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

_ More than one.  _

“Come on, we need to keep moving.”

_ Tell me about it. _

 

* * *

  
  


It’s a quieter moment and Miles asks her what she meant when she told him that she doesn’t do friends anymore.

How can she tell him that choice was forced out of her because the world turned against her and the one person who would’ve stuck by her through it all was the inciting incident? 

How can she tell that story to another person and not break down between every story beat?

How can she lay all that onto a kid who’s just getting into this vigilante justice business and not expect him to immediately tuck tail and leave? She would. She should’ve. Sometimes she wishes she had.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Peter that’s not her’s and not Miles’ says that he gets it. She doesn’t ask how he recognized her grief because she could recognize his from a mile away. 

She asks who it was for him and he says it was his universe’s her. He says he was a little older than she is now, and the two of them were as close as anyone could be. It was before Mary Jane, before there was a multiverse. 

He wouldn’t tell her how because of some philosophy about not altering other realities that sounded like it was lifted from a bad sci-fi, but she doesn’t push. She couldn’t if she tried. 

She tells him her story in return, omitting the same details, and he doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t thank him out loud, but that’s what she would’ve wanted if she were in his place. 

He leaves without a hug or a closing remark, but it still has the distinct feeling of closure.

 

* * *

  
  


When they all branch off again and return to their own universes, Gwen can’t help the sadness that follows. The feeling of being slammed back shut after slowly opening up throughout their adventure is one she wishes she could say she didn’t know was coming. 

She talks to Miles sometimes, and she cherishes the normalcy it gives her. He’ll ask her how school is and for those precious moments she can lie through her teeth and say it would be alright if her teachers didn’t all suck. She can leave out the fact that she hadn’t been to a single class since she was in his world because she was too busy being a wanted fugitive for a crime she’d rather shatter herself than commit. In those conversations, she can talk like she isn’t always angry that no matter what she does she can’t bring. him. back. 

She almost never talks to Other Peter. They both always tell the other that it’s because they’re so busy, and they both always know that the other is full of shit. When they do talk, it’s like the old friends they wished they were. The same normalcy as Miles, accompanied by a dream of familiarity. 

She tells him to talk to MJ again. He tells her to try talking to her dad. 

Neither listens. Why should they? They might as well be strangers. 

**Author's Note:**

> I love her and Peter B.'s dynamic, and I have thoughts about it


End file.
